Local governance minder, Amon Kotei, has criticized President J.E.A. Mills’s assessment of his metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives, saying he has great doubt the local governance system is working at all. On Wednesday President Mills gave thumbs up for his Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executive’s (MMDCEs) for undertaking impressive development projects over the past two years. “I have been very much impressed by what I have seen. It should be clear that the people of Ghana are seeing what we have been able to do in two and half years and their appreciation is loud for all to hear,” President Mills told his representatives at Koforidua, where about 83 Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives from the Greater Accra, Eastern, Central, Western and Volta regions are being schooled on how to quicken the pace of development, job creation and poverty reduction. “I will like to seize this opportunity to congratulate you for the wonderful work that you have been doing and the solid effort that you are making to ensure that our Better Ghana Agenda is comprehensively rolled out.” But Amon Kotei disagrees, arguing that the entire decentralization system needs a complete overhaul to function effectively. He told Joy News that reading from the ruling National Democratic Congress party manifesto, he is yet to see a single policy direction to back the party’s intended devolution type of decentralization. “As we’re speaking now we don’t know whether we are practicing the town council system or the sub-metro system because the NPP came and expanded the sub-metro system to the town council level and we are running with it. So it looks as if there is some confusion all over so I cannot appreciate someone saying that the local government, for that matter the MMDCEs are doing well”, he said. However Deputy Local Government Minister, Elvis Afriyie Ankrah believes Amon Kotei is wrong. “His Excellency the President has been going round; he’s seen projects being commissioned. At the policy level we’ve had our decentralization policy framework with an action plan; we are deepening the decentralization process…; We’ve targeted that we are going to have our composite budget by 2012. These are all measures that have been put in place to deepen decentralization. Local governance is a process, even in developed countries who have very, very well rooted local governance systems like France – they still tell us they are still evolving.” Story by Joy FM/Ghana